Relationships in Digital Media

Please Knock On My Door Mental Health Analysis

Murray makes another note in their immersion article that, “The boundlessness of the rhizome experience is crucial to its comforting side. Construing space and moving through it in an exploratory way (when done for its own sake and not in order to find the dentist's office or the right airport gate) is a satisfying activity regardless of whether the space is real or virtual” (Murray 129). Indeed, the landscape itself is an extremely comforting sense of emotion that the player receives from the landscape. However, Please Knock on My Door removes that sense of comfort to subject the player to discomfort. As the game reaches the end, the person ultimately drives themselves to insanity with their notes and ends up killing themselves. At this point, the player has become immersed within the story due to the compelling lack of agency and desire to help. This mechanic of removing the ability to make decisions as the story continues removes that sense of agency from the player. This demonstrates the relationship again between the internal and external struggle that individuals with mental health deal with but also shares that same experience with the player. The feeling of hopelessness and the only way out is to end the game. 
 

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

This page references: